Sunnyvale police: Officer shoots man who charged at him with hammer

SUNNYVALE -- A Sunnyvale man in his 20s was shot multiple times Saturday night by police after allegedly charging at an officer with a hammer, police said.

The man was undergoing surgery late Saturday night, according to Sunnyvale Public Safety Dept. Capt. Doug Moretto.

Moretto said the shooting occurred not long after 6 p.m., when two officers arrived at a residence on Tartarian Way in response to 911 calls that a man was assaulting his mother.

As the officers approached the scene, Moretto said, they found a man who matched the description of the person involved in the assault. He said the man was standing in the street near the intersection of Tartarian Way and Middlebury Drive and was holding what appeared to be a hammer in his hand.

Moretto said one of the officers approached the man and told him to stop what he was doing and to drop the hammer.

The officer -- and his partner who was nearby -- told investigators that the man refused, and allegedly charged the first officer, who shot the man several times, in self-defense, Moretto said.

Both officers immediately gave the man first aid, and called for an ambulance which arrived and took the man to a nearby hospital where he was in surgery. Moretto said he did not know the man's condition.

The incident is under investigation.

The last officer-involved shooting in Sunnyvale occurred in Sept. 2007, when two Sunnyvale Public Safety officers shot and killed a 32-year-old man who was wanted on suspicion of murder.